Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - The Secret to Making Habits Stick (Even When You Have No Willpower!) | Clutterbug Podcast # 265

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

Have you ever set a goal, felt super motivated for a few days, and then completely fallen off track? Me too—until I discovered a better way. In this episode, I’m sharing how I finally made habits effortless and automatic. No more relying on willpower, no more waiting for motivation. Just simple, science-backed tricks that actually work. If you’re ready to stop starting over and finally follow through, this episode will change everything!       You can find more Clutterbug content here: Website: http://www.clutterbug.me YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clutterbug TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clutterbug_me Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clutterbug_me/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Clutterbug.Me/   #clutterbug #podcast #mondaymotivation #mindsetshift Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, clutterbugs. We are back with another tough love podcast today. I'm going to talk about creating new habits so you can actually achieve the goals that you want and why habits are important, how to make it easy and feel effortless. And I'm going to back this with like science and lots of expert advice so that 2025 we're doing cool stuff. Okay. We're actually finally doing all the stuff we said we were going to do in 2024. Are you ready for this? Buckle up, friends, lots of stuff to cover today. And I'm hoping while you're listening to this that you are going to do something to make you proud. So we're learning or getting motivated. But more importantly, you're checking something off that never-ending to-do list. So no passively listening to this.

We're doing the dishes or putting away laundry or tidying or decluttering or declutter. removing things from your home forever. Make it better. Let's make a difference today so that you can feel good and then take the rest of the day to relax or do something cool because you're like, yeah, I already did a big thing today. Okay, so jumping in, we're talking about building habits because the truth is habit is the secret behind everything that we do that's like good and consistent in achieving our success and goals and all that good stuff. It is the habit. That's the magic. It is the habits that build skill. It's the habits that achieve big results. And it's the habits that we don't have to wait for motivation or force motivation. It's those things that we're doing without realizing

that we're doing it that's making all the difference. And we have good habits and we have bad habits, obviously. But today we're going to be talking about creating new good habits. And I think why this is important is because willpower is something I struggle with. I don't know about you, but I am not a person who has a lot of self-discipline or willpower. And so I need to rely on my subconscious brain to make things happen. If something's hard, if I have to, you know, force myself to do something or schedule time and like make myself show up, nine times out of 10, I won't. I'll procrastinate. And the thing about motivation is it, it comes and goes. We can't wait for it. And so if we can set up an automatic behavior, that's winning. That's the

real good stuff. Okay. So basically the tough love aspect that I'm on to bring today is like, let's stop pretending we're going to be better tomorrow. Let's stop pretending that. that we just need to, you know, pull up our bootstraps and do this big, giant thing and we're going to get it all done in one weekend, or we just need to take a week off work, or we just need to wait until we have extra help or a bigger house or more money or more time. And let's actually do something that's long-lasting and that feels effortless, okay? one of my favorite books of all times is atomic habits. And I feel like James Clear is the king of habit forming because he gets it. He does big a, he might be one of those people that like wakes up at 5 a.m.

And just constantly, you know, has self-discipline. I don't know. But in my mind, he's a lot like me in that adulting is a struggle and he found a hack and then he wrote a book about it. Whether this is true or not, you know, it doesn't matter because the whole point of atomic habits is that it really works for everyone, but especially for people who want to do amazing things and be this person who has a ton of self-discipline and has really strong, healthy habits like working out every day and having a house that's clean and tidy all the time and choosing salads and healthy food over junk food and is really good with finances and saves money and doesn't overspend and has strong, healthy relationships and exciting and really fulfilling career and does hobbies

and maybe learns another language and basically does all the things well. And the secret behind atomic habits is achieving all that, but making it feel like like you're not trying at all because you're building these core habits that don't take thought or effort or motivation or self-discipline. And we continue to build on them. So James Clear basically is like here's the, there's two factors that really go into this book. And I'm going to break it down. You could buy the book or you could just do these two things. It's all about the teeny tiny little things that trigger in our brain to keep doing that make it easy and trigger in our brain every day that we can do it. So if you can't, I don't know, clean your whole house for five hours,

can you do five minutes? And five minutes feels so small that it's like, is that even going to make a difference? But that's the point. There's no excuse to putting it off because it's so micro. And what really is the key here is doing these micro things daily. So that after a couple of weeks of doing it, we don't have to remind ourselves or force ourselves to do these little five minute pickups. And all of these little five minutes add up to the five hours over time. And all of these little five minutes also build that internal habit. So sometimes the mess isn't done in five minutes. So we spend 10 or 15. 15, but we don't have to force ourselves to get started for the five anymore.

We're in the habit that this is what we do. We are just a person who tidies without having to remind ourselves or force ourselves. So it's hard in the beginning to like start anything, but it makes it a whole lot easier if the new habit we have to start is less than five minutes. And I think that's the magic of atomic habits. The other thing that he really talks about in the book is changing your environment to make these five-minute things easier. So it's kind of a combination of like habit stacking. So if you want to write yourself a to-do list every day, what I did after reading Atomic Habits was I put my

notepad right beside my coffee maker. So when I make my chai latte in the morning and I'm waiting for it to brew, right there is the notepad in the pen. Now I'm in the habit of just jotting down all the things I want to do in the day, like, without thinking about it. I don't have to like remind myself, oh, you got to make a do-list and where's the pen and get the notebook. I've adapted my environment to catch that. I've adapted my fridge so that the first thing I see is healthy fruits and vegetables when I open it. And I've adapted my environment to eliminate junk food, which really sucks. And I'm not saying this has been a good time or whatever. But it makes those little atomic habits It's easier.

So now it's like, okay, I've got to make lunch. Well, it's all fresh fruits and vegetables already washed and prepared. So it's a few seconds now to eat something healthy and choose a healthy lunch instead of going and eating granola bars or cookies or something else. I'm lazy. It was in the house. So, yeah, that's kind of the secret behind there. But we're going to talk about lots of strategies.

I just want to really hit home the atomic habits part because I think this is such a key aspect that the majority of us aren't doing. When we think about new daily habits that we want, and I was in my experts group last night talking about this and asking some of the new habits that they wanted to incorporate in their lives, a lot of the things were a walk an hour a day or walk 10,000 steps, or clean the entire kitchen every night before bed. But if you're coming from a place of you are not in the habit of walking, period, ever throughout the day,

to now forcing yourself to do 10,000 steps, that's too big of a leap. That's too hard to do consistently. And the secret behind establishing habits is the daily consistent, aspect of it. So we have to eliminate all excuses. So instead of walking 10,000 steps a day, your goal is to walk 100 steps, 100, which is nothing. So you're putting on your shoes and you only have to walk for one minute or five minutes. And that's it. And our brain tells us, well, what the heck's that going to do? That's not going to do anything. My goal is to walk 10,000 steps,

not 100 or 500, that's not even going to make a difference. But that's, we're thinking, you're not thinking about the big picture here. Your actual goal is not to walk 10,000 steps. Your actual goal is to walk every day 10,000 or more steps without having to make yourself do it. Without having to have motivation, without having to have reminders, without even realizing that you're doing it. It's just part of your routine and it feels effortless. That's the true goal. The byproduct of that is how many steps you get in. So we set these expectations for ourselves so high and they feel so big and we might be motivated to do it for a few days, but we fail to do it every day because we haven't built up this habit yet. So we start with super,

small that feels insignificant and I know you're like but maybe some days you actually do walk 10,000 steps and that's great. I'm not suggesting you stop, you know, but you have to do at least one minute or five minutes in order for that consistency to change and rewire your brain and make putting on your shoes and going out the door a daily habit that you don't even realize you're doing. And there's no room for failure there. There's no room for excuses. There's no room for, oh, I'll just do you know, 20,000 tomorrow, there's no wishy-washy here. There's like, you're doing this every day because it's all about brains and thought patterns. So that's the atomic habits. Books like the power of habit is also, that was really an effective book that I read that kind of changed my thoughts about

doing things every day. And it was written by Charles, I want to say it's dung, but that's That doesn't seem right. I don't think that's his last name, but you know, let's just go with it. His whole thing is identifying a cue. So looking for those cues or having a cue to remind your brain to do the little habit that you want to do. So looking for cues, then doing the routine, then feeling the reward. So a cue might be after dinner, your sink has dirty dishes in it or you have dirty dishes. is that's the cue. The routine is you're going to wash those dishes or load the dishwasher

and the reward is you have a clean kitchen. Where the effectiveness comes in is like mentally being aware of the queue and not allowing yourself to ignore it. For me, I'm really bad at identifying environmental cues. I needed external alarms. So every day, especially at my messiest, I would set multiple alarms to remind me to do things like a five-minute tidy up or clean the kitchen after dinner and I would have them go off every day. Sometimes I would ignore those alarms. I'm not suggesting I didn't. But it did put that reminder in my brain, which meant most of the time, even if I would ignore it at that minute, the thought is now there. It's like, oh yeah, I got to do the kitchen. And then I would set another alarm because I know myself like a half an hour later.

Sometimes I had already done it. And I was like, yeah, I don't need this alarm. I already did it. But a lot of times, like, oh, fine, you're right. I got to do it. And again, if we set that expectation of the thing that we have to do to be so small, like five minutes, maybe it's not even do all the dishes. Maybe it's fill the sink with hot soapy water and put the dishes into it.

Maybe we'll go further. But even if we don't, it's the thought pattern. It's a new habit that's being established that we're thinking and doing something with the dishes instead of the current habit that we have, which is finish watching TV or go upstairs or leave and leave the dishes where they are. Because the truth is being messy as a habit. The truth is everything we do is habit based in the habit of sleeping in, in the habit of eating junk food, in the habit of not exercising, in the habit of laying on the couch all night.

These are also habits. They just don't, we don't think of them as habits because we're doing them without even realizing it, which is what really a habit actually is. And so to create new ones, they have to be tiny and microscopic. It's just about rewiring the brain. And then we can build and evolve on those things going forward. So mini habits, making them super small, super, super key. and then having those cues because oftentimes we will forget to remember.

That's a big part of establishing new habits is that our brain, it doesn't think about them. And so they're not, it's like, yes, I'm going to do this amazing thing every day at six. And then, you know, it's 8 o'clock and we're like, oh, yeah, I totally forgot I wanted to do that. Like we don't even think about it. So having those alarms or identifying those cues and allowing those to remind us are so important. And I think that's where habit stacking comes into. We're going to talk about that in just a second, like actual real strategies for sticking with new habits.

But before we jump into that, I want you to think for a second about your own life. And I want you to identify a few things that you want to change, something that you want to work on. And a new daily habit that you wish or you've told yourself you want to do or like, you know, someday, maybe it's the same thing you've been talking to yourself for years. I know that's for me. It's like I want to work out every day.

And I've been saying that for years. And I've yet to follow through. So really think about that. Let's look at and identifying one of those things. And now be real with yourself. Is it tiny enough? Is it a micro habit? And if it's workout every day,

How can we make it small? If it's clean the house consistently. If it's I want to declutter. What can we do to make that a daily microatomic habit? And I had to get really real with myself because I said I was going to work out for 15 minutes every day. And it was rarely happening. I would do it for a couple days. I would last a week.

And then it would fall right off the wagon. And 15 minutes is not enough. My real goal is like half a half. an hour to an hour. But I was like, oh, 15 minutes. No, that's not micro enough. My new goal is five. And I've set alarms throughout the day, five minutes. I just have to move my body for five minutes. And what I've found is for me, the best time is like after dinner before bed type. So I have multiple alarms reminding me then. And I have not missed a day. And truthfully, most of the time I only do five minutes. But what I've found is happening and it's only been like it's

day six today yesterday and the day before. I came up after cleaning up the dinner and hanging it with the family. I came up without even realizing it. I was putting on my running shoes in my closet. I was like just putting on running shoes. That's habit forming. My brain is now, now is the time to go workout, I was like on autopilot. I don't even know what I was thinking about. Find myself in the closet, putting on my sneakers. Say what? That's the secret, friends. That's the secret. Because it's a lot easier to push yourself to go from five minutes to 10 minutes of a habit than it is to like go from nothing to now I'm doing 10. Or to remind yourself every day you have to work out. Like the autopilot sets in and then we build upon that. I hope this.

makes sense. It's going to be the same for decluttering. Maybe you only find five things today. It's going to be the same for it cleaning. Maybe you will only tidy for five minutes or two minutes every day at the same time. Once you are doing this without even realizing it, it's a lot easier to stretch that two minutes into five or that five minutes into 10 or into 15 than it is to create a brand new habit from scratch. So I'm feeling, identify whatever it is. and we're only going to focus on one habit at a time. So the big one, the one that's going to make the real impact in your life. For me, I started with my home because it is the foundation for my entire life.

And I had to start from the bottom. It was like I had to train myself to do my dishes every day. Then it was like, okay, I'm just going to pick up for a few minutes. And then it was, all right, I'm just going to do, you know, put the laundry in washer in the dryer every day and then build and then build and then build. And before you know it, you're in the habit of just being a tidy person who has a home that's tidy all the time. But you can't go from zero to 100. We got to do these little tiny baby steps. So you've got something in your mind. Now let's talk about some strategies. And the one I really want to talk about first,

you're not going to like it if you're a cricket or a bee. But it's helpful. okay you ready it's doing it shitty and i'm sorry for the swear word let's say doing it crappy it's allowing yourself to whatever new thing that you want to be doing new habit new goal allowing yourself to take a shortcut and be really just not good at it yep and there's this you know, age old saying, if something's worth doing, it's worth doing right. And I want to take that and throw it right in the garbage. Because that is so much pressure and expectations, especially if we're looking at other people who are doing it right around us, without realizing that they have built a skill through practice and repetition. Because repetition is the mother of skill.

So if you have a sister or a best friend whose house is always clean, they have practiced that. They are skilled at that. They are better at it than you because they do it consistently. They're faster. It doesn't feel hard for them because they've done it so often. They've really built their muscle and they're very efficient at it. And it's almost impossible to go from like sucking at something to being an expert. right to being really good at it and when we put this pressure on ourselves to do everything in this

perfect way it makes it so hard it makes it so hard to get started it makes it takes so long it makes it hard to finish it it just and even our best when we're starting from scratch and have no practice isn't even going to be close to someone who's done it for a year's worst and that i think is something that we don't realize it's like learning an instrument instrument. My daughter plays ukulele and guitar. And when she started, she was not great. And she'd like play for five minutes and like play a little crappy song. She's like, I'm just messing around, I'm just having fun. But she would do that every day or a couple of times a week. Now she just picks up and plays with her guitar, fools around with her guitar. And it sounds like she's some

sort of guitar wizard. Like, I'm like, holy crap, you're so good. She's like, man, I don't really try. I don't take lessons. It's not like to her it's still crappy shitty, shitty effort. To her, it never feels hard. She's never making her fingers bleed. She's never practicing for hours. She's never putting in insane amounts of effort. And yet she plays like she does.

Because repetition is the mother of skill. because consistency builds expertise. So giving yourself permission to suck is truly the secret to doing things consistently enough that you become amazing at it and it never feeling like hard effort. And I swear by this philosophy because everything I've ever achieved in life, I've given myself permission to just, you just got to do something up to, You just, oh, the floors look, you just, you don't have to move furniture. You just have to mop the high traffic areas. Next thing you know, every day I'm doing a quick mop and my floors are always clean

because I'm in the habit, because I'm faster at it. Because I've done it so often and so many times, I've learned to be really freaking good at cleaning my floors or decluttering or organizing or writing books or building a business or making YouTube videos. Podcast, I'm not so great at the podcast. that's fine listen i don't really plan i sit down and i start talking i give myself permission to make a really shitty podcast but i promise you they're a lot better now than they were when i first started and you can take someone who's never done it before and they can plan and they can have scripts and they can be like you know have just like trying their absolute hardest they can take hours and hours on the podcast and my crappy podcast that i'm just sitting here chatting with you will be better

Why? Because repetition builds skill. And also, it still for me feels effortless and easy like I'm taking a shortcut and not trying. So life feels easier. Life feels more effortless and yet we're still able to achieve all these amazing things. And the best part is it's a lot faster to become skilled at something and to form these core habits than we think. It really is. They say, Philippa Lally, who wrote 66 day habit formation. She did that 66 day habit formation study proved with research and science that it takes 66 days to form a true new brain rewired habit. So doing something every day for 66 days will rewire your brain so you no longer have to force yourself to do it. It will be an unconscious, a subconscious, just habit that you do.

66 days is just over two months so how can we stick with something for that long it has to feel like nothing that new habit has to feel so small so easy so insignificant because we got to get to that 66 days so it's a built-in pattern within us and then and then we can stretch it out you know then we can like maybe put in a little more effort but also at the end of 66 days the shitty way you did it in day one is going to be like you're trying a whole lot harder on day 66 even though you're not because you're just better at it because you practiced for so long and you did it over and over again for so yep friends for the first time i'm actually doing uh the health and fitness thing this way. I think I've resisted making it this tiny in the past, even though I talk about

it because it felt like it wouldn't do anything at all. That's the truth. I'm just being honest. I felt like I was so, like what is five minutes of exercise going to do? What a waste. I've got to do at least a half an hour. What is just eating a little bit more fruits and vegetables at lunch going to do when I'm eating chocolate and junk food at night? What's that going to do? Like I got a go big if I want to make big changes. This is the stuff I've been telling myself, even though I'm telling you something different. Because I, for some reason, thought like health and fitness was different. I'm like, yeah, I know it works for building a business. I know doing little tiny things works because I've proven that to myself. And I know that when it comes to your home and cleaning

and decluttering, I know that there's little tiny things that feel like it's going to do nothing. I know that works because I've done it and proven to myself. But it's no. going to work for health and fitness. This was my own crazy lie that I was telling myself. So it is now March 6th. I've only worked out for five minutes a day. Some days I'd do a little bit more. I eliminated super amounts of junk food from my house, which sucks really bad. But my only goal is to eat more fruits and vegetables at lunch. That's it. That's my only expectation. And I've set myself up for that and I've lost three pounds and I feel really good and I'm putting on my sneakers without even realizing it. I'm just like my brain and it's been six days. So I'm excited and I want

this for you too. But let's talk about more strategies that could work for you in your new habit. because the real reality is what works for me might not work for you. And I do think the atomic habits and doing things shitty and having alarms to remind you, I think that works for everyone. But I also think that you may be motivated by other things. So use those strategies and let's add in more. Let's try things. So one strategy that I just learned about is called gamification.

I learned about this yesterday. I was doing a live talking about, you know, how do we stay consistent? How do we make this feel like more fun, I guess, so that we're actually doing it. And someone suggested something called gamification, which is basically turning your new habit into a game. And I'm a competitive person. And I'm a nerd for board games. So I love this. There is an app that I downloaded.

called Habitica. I could be wrong, but it's like a way to turn it into a game where you log it in, you get points and stars, and the more you do your daily habits, you get prizes. Like you can make your avatar have new clothes and you can like change the way they look. Like I'm all about this. But another way that you can make this into sort of a gamification is with a literal star chart. So every day that you do it, you like, you put something on the board or you have a little calendar. and you do a checkmark, you're not going to want to miss a day. You're not going to want to mess that up. Your goal now is to see how many days in a row you can do it. But because it's only five minutes or less, because there's no excuses, because even if something gets in the way, you're like, oh,

well, I can still squeeze that in right before bed or when I first come up. I can still, like, fit this in. You're turning it into a little game, but there's no way to lose. there's no way to fail. Maybe you're doing like a point system or like a bingo. So you're writing all the things that you want to do on a card, maybe a bunch of different cleaning checklists. And then if you get a line, you know, either way, you're like, woo, bingo, and you treat yourself to something.

Yeah, I don't know. Like watching a movie or a show or something, something amazing. You're treating yourself. because you've done like that the clean house bingo. If you are a kind of person who has that like competitive spirit and this appeals to you, this could be an addition that you add on to really make this happen, whatever small habit that you want. Okay.

So another really important strategy, maybe this is going to work for you, is to be more specific and clear on your goal. Instead of saying, I want to work out every day, my goal is I am working out for five minutes every day. Instead of my goal being, I want to be a person who has a clean house, or I want my habit to be, I clean my kitchen every day. Maybe your habit is I load the dishwasher after dinner. Or I fill the sink with hot soapy water.

Be clear. be specific with your habit. This stops the decision fatigue. This stops you from feeling overwhelmed. And this stops you from having to like think of excuses of how you can get out of it. Like, because when we're overwhelmed, our brain's like clean the whole kitchen. That's going to take five minutes. Oh, we totally talk ourselves out of it because we're, we don't really want to.

We're feeling overwhelmed. It's too broad of a goal. It's just there's too much leeway. But how can you talk yourself out of filling the sink with hot soapy water? How can you even talk yourself out of loading the dishes into the dishwasher? You know, you're like, well, I don't take that long. So being clear, being specific is so important. And then another strategy is reducing friction.

This is tough, but it's also really effective, especially if your thing that you, like a thing that you want to do, is like eating related, I suppose. I guess you can really attribute this to anything, but specifically, like, I don't want to eat junk food, so I only have to be strong at the store. And I'm not strong at the store. So I have to just send Joe to the grocery store to get groceries

with the rule that we're not buying junk food. So now I've eliminated the friction in that I don't have to open up the pantry of the fridge and then have self-discipline every time to not eat the bad food. because there is no bad food in the house. And I'm not happy about this. My children, not happy about this. We don't have potato chips. We don't have candy.

We don't have chocolate. We don't have anything. If I want to have a sweet, I got to bake cookies. What? That's friction. But the fridge is filled with washed and cut fruit. Everything's prepared. There's cucumbers chopped up and there's dip and there's baby carrots.

ready to go, there's no friction to eating healthy and there's a lot of friction to eating unhealthy and that is helping. So how can you eliminate friction when it comes to cleaning? Maybe you have your favorite cleaning product out on the counter with a rag. No friction to wiping down the counter when you see a spill. Zero. Maybe you put the laundry hamper exactly where you're, were naturally throwing your dirty clothes on the floor, eliminating the friction. You're now putting it in a hamper. No friction. You don't have to open the lid, nothing. You don't have to move. You don't have to walk to another room. Done. Maybe you put a clutter catcher right on your counter where you're naturally piling. No friction to pick up. It's already in the basket that is picked up. You could just

slide the basket to the side and wipe underneath, eliminating friction. So we can look around at the things in our house that we want to change or in ourselves that we want to change and really brainstorm and think of ideas of how can we just like make this way easier to either do the habit or stop doing the bad habit by eliminating friction by removing the obstacles by doing a little prep in advance so it's super super easy packing a gym bag and leaving it by the door eliminates all the friction from going to the gym after work because you just grab the bag when you go It's not like you're like, oh, I have to pack a bag, I grab my shoes, I got to grab a towel, it's all ready. And sitting by the back door, no friction.

Pick it up, you grab it with you when you go. You're way more likely to actually go to the gym. Okay. Another strategy that we've talked about a lot, but let's just give examples is habit stacking. So I gave the example of leaving my notebook. Here it is, my notebook, if you're watching the video right beside my coffee maker, my curag. So when I make my coffee every morning, I like, I'm just writing it down the things I want to do in the day. But I also stacked taking my medication with brushing my teeth because I really, really, really, really sucked at remembering to take my meds.

And even when I left them out at the counter as like a visual reminder, I would forget. I don't know. I don't know why. But when I printed myself this little note and laminated it that said, take your meds done. me. Listen, I know it's so, whatever, it works for me. I put it on my toothbrush. I punched a hole in it. I put an elastic on my toothbrush. And then I literally keep my pills on top of my toothbrush. Because I'm in the habit without thinking about brushing my teeth. I don't have to make myself brush my teeth. I could be half asleep and like out of my mind. I'd still like get up in the

morning, stumble into the bathroom and start brushing my teeth, washing my face. I just do that without even thinking. So now I just take my meds without thinking too because I've stacked it because it's right on top. It's a habit that I do at the same time. So what can you do at the same time? Maybe you watch your favorite movie every night or favorite show or like you're getting done dinner and you and your hubby like cuddle on the couch and watch something. Can you stack doing crunches on the commercials or if you're streaming and it doesn't have commercials, can you sit on the floor to watch the first five minutes of the show and do some stretches? At least you're, you know, you're stacking it.

You're doing that habit at the same time as something that you're already in the habit of. I'm just spitballing here, but this is super helpful. And the last strategy, well, there's a lot of strategies, but the other strategy that I really want to talk about is accountability. because so many of us have this obligor, people pleasing type nature, where we just don't want to disappoint other people. We're fine to disappoint ourselves, but we don't want to disappoint other people. So maybe it's as simple as you're just every day posting a post on Facebook, oh, day one, did my habit, day two, did my habit. Or you're, you're just, you're just every day, you're

Or you're asking a friend to be your accountability buddy and they text you every day to make sure you've done it or you have a quick phone call and you do the thing at the same time as them. Or you join a group where at the end of the week, you know, a Facebook group or something where you're like, I did this. A running group if you want to run is a really good accountability. How can we tie this to someone else? and for me it was helpful to tie when I was first writing the book to tie it to my children so I would tell Milo like if I got this chapter done we will go out for ice cream oh we can do this fun thing on the weekend mom just has to finish writing this chapter I got to get my chapter done so then Thursday would come along and I'd be like oh man I got to do I'm supposed to do this thing with Milo but

I can't do it unless I finish my chapter and suddenly I'm doing it for him not me. I'm getting stuff done. He's holding me accountable and everyone wins. So accountability is another option that you can do. I think, I think we all know these things. I'm not telling you anything that you haven't heard before. That's not what the Clutterbug podcast is about. The truth is, there's rarely anything I tell you that you haven't heard before. You know this. You're smart. You know this. But are you doing it? Are you actually doing it? Are you actually like writing down a specific goal? Are you setting an alarm for yourself to do it? Are you making it so, so ridiculously stupid tiny that it feels like it's not even going to make a difference? Are you doing that?

probably not because the truth is I wasn't doing that either and then we beat ourselves up for not achieving these things we want to do or being the person we beat ourselves up for not having a clean house or being in good shape or saving money and yet we're not actually doing the steps we know we need to do we're waiting until we can have motivation to do it all at once this miraculous transformation. That ain't it, friend. That doesn't exist. It's never going to happen. What are you going to do differently today? You've already identified that habit. I just shared strategies. Get it done. Let's do it. Write that down. Make it specific. What are you going to stack it on? What's going to be your cue?

Set that alarm. Who's going to be your accountability buddy? How are you going to do it shittier? How are you going to do that really freaking badly? How can you make that feel like whatever it is that you want to do more of a shortcut? And then how are you going to keep doing that every single day? If your goal is every night to have a clean sink, clear counters and an empty dishwasher, Are you going to have a checklist on the side of your fridge that you can check off every day? And you only got to do five minutes towards those. It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be done. You only got to work five minutes towards that goal.

You got to set a timer every day for five minutes. And when you do it, you check it off or you give yourself a point, a gold star. And then when you've earned 20 points that week, because you've done it like all the time, I don't know, you like get to go to star. and get your favorite drink, turn it into a game. Put it on the StarT chart. Or if you do it every night, maybe you get pizza on Friday and you have paper plates. That's your goal.

That's how you're winning. If your goal is to declutter every day for five minutes or every Sunday, right? How can we hack this? Maybe it's like you only have to find five things to go and they can be, It could be trash. So it doesn't feel hard. Or maybe you're going to say, okay, we're going to do it every Sunday at two with my best friend while on the phone.

And we only have to set a timer. We only have to declutter for 10 minutes together while talking. No pressure. No pressure on how much you get rid of. No pressure on anything. But you've got that accountability, buddy. So now it's a habit. And you're strengthening that decluttering muscle.

And before you know it, you're going to find harder things to let go of. And it's going to feel a little easier. and you're going to have less in your house. And then it's not Sunday. It's a Tuesday at four. And you come across something, you're like, oh, I can declutter this without even thinking and realizing because now you've built a decluttering habit. Daily workouts, right?

How can we hack this? Well, friends, five minutes is working for me. Same time, every day, I only got a workout for five minutes. No bigs. I can do a crappy job. I can sit on the floor. I can sit on the floor and just like clench my butt cheeks. That counts.

Like there's no pressure. I don't have to lift anything heavy. I can just like bend over and touch my toes. I got to just move my body while wearing running shoes, doing something that feels remotely like exercise for five minutes. This is changing my life. No excuses. I'm doing it shitty, but I'm consistently doing it.

And I'm building a habit that I'm a person that works out every day. And when I have that habit of I'm a person who works out every day, it's going to be easy to go from five minutes to 10. It's going to be easy from just, you know, touching my toes to doing some squats. Because I've built that new neuro pathway. Because I have made that part of my identity. Because I am now a person who works out daily. It doesn't matter how long I'm doing it for and what I'm doing it for.

I'm a person who works out daily and I can build on that. And maybe for week one, I can only lift three pounds and it doesn't feel. It feels so easy like ridiculous. And then five feels just as easy as three. And then 10 feels just as easy as three did in the beginning. And then 20 feels just as easy as three did. And before you know it, I'm a freaking weight lifter over here. And everyone's like, how are you doing that so heavy?

And I'm like, I don't know, it doesn't feel heavy to me. That's it. And we're not just talking about weights here. It's everything, everything. Repetition is the mother of skill. That's it. That's the secret. So I love you guys so much. I hope you're feeling like you did something awesome while listening to this. And I know I just am saying things you already know, but that is not my job to always teach you something new. My job is to kick you in the pants and say, stop whining. Stop making excuses. Stop complaining and do the thing. It doesn't have. to be hard. It doesn't have to take motivation and discipline. You can do a shit job for like, I don't care if it's one minute. That is doing enough because if you do this daily, it is building the most important muscle, which is your brain. It is changing you fundamentally as a person. It's all in your hands, man. You deserve this.

You deserve all the good stuff, but you also deserve to not have to work hard to get it and for it not to feel like effort. For it to feel easy because you can have it all. Thank you guys so much for listening and I'll see you guys next time.